Russia Finally Presents Draft Law On Cryptos: What’s Inside

In the rage of the Eastern European digital money
regulation,
Russia seems to have positioned itself quite firmly. With the preliminary consideration of this bill on cryptocurrencies on December 28 by State Duma on December 28, Russia has moved even further. Now the latest draft law on cyber money has been published, pointing at interesting regulatory features. However, it does not cover the issues of taxation in the field yet.

Main Points

The Russian Ministry of Finance has released a bill on the regulation of digital assets. It is crucial as it finally gives a hint on how Russian regulators see the cyber money. For example, the document defines such phenomena as digital money itself, including BTC, explains what tokens, initial coin offerings, as well as mining, are. The bill can be found on the
official website
of the Russian financial body.

What is What

The action of producing bitcoins and other coins, known in the crypto world as
mining
, in the Russian document is considered as entrepreneurial activity.

In its turn,
bitcoin and its brethren
, on par with
tokens
, are defined as types of digital financial assets.

In the meantime,
smart contracts
in the bill are named as standard contracts in the electronic format.

Exchanges

As long as the bill points out, anybody, who wants to be an operator of digital money exchange, is obliged to register as legal entities. After that, the activity of the person must consent with the federal laws
"On organized trades,"
as well as
"On the securities market."

Another ‘surprise’ is that swapping of cyber money and tokens in Russia with other types of cryptos, public currency, including foreign, will be permitted only via exchange platforms, which are registered in the country. Norms on taxation have not been considered in the bill yet.

ICO and Tokens

Furthermore, those, who organize initial coin offerings, no longer will be free in their actions. To be able to run their businesses, they will have to share information about:

beneficiaries

location of the issuer

validator

people carrying out the depository activities

rights of the holders of the tokens

order of their launch

price of the token

date of contracts commencement for the tokens acquisition

Also, in accordance with the draft law, only individual entrepreneurs or legal entities will have the right to issue tokens for the rise of funds. Meanwhile, a particular toke can be emitted only by one entity, no more.

Surely, unqualified investors will be able to buy tokens. However, they will have their own restrictions. Such investors will be able to pile only into the limit of one issue. That shall not surpass the margin of 50,000 rubles.

Waiting For Crypto Ruble

By the way, the launch of Russia’s national cyber currency ‘cryptoruble’ has been postponed. Proposals for the development and regulation of cryptoruble will be put forward only in July 2018, and it will take at least a year to launch it fully.

As Russian officials previously
reported,
cryptoruble is being developed like a ‘clone’ of Russian public currency ruble. Its security is going to be back up by the used of the closed blockchain network. At the same time, nobody will be able to mine the state virtual coin.